Bob Walters

Monday, July 27, 2009

Life in Italy: good news for Insubria

Another evaluation of Universities, this time by Minister Gelmini, and this time it counts: the percentages are increments or decrements of financing. The criterion is "being virtuous". There are significant differences between the order here and that given by Il Sole 24 Ore.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Life in Italy: University reform - too many specialist degrees

Reflecting, it seems to me that the Science Faculty in Como is trying to keep open too many specialist degrees. Remember that the reform requires a 25% reduction of courses. In Como there are at present 5 specialist degrees - Chimica, Chimica Industriale, Fisica, Matematica and Ambientale. The new enrolment in total for these courses in 2008 was less than 20 students (at 30 November). Forty staff will be needed to cover these 2 year courses under the new rules. Even reducing by one specialist degree, 32 staff would be needed, much more than the number of new enrolling students.

The president of the faculty justifies these courses on the basis of excellence of staff at Como. But there are also excellent staff in Milan which is 50 kilometers distance from Como, with two distinct train services.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Life in Italy: reform of the Universities

I have written before about the law 270. Now we are speaking about the duesettantuno, because the 270 is gradually evolving. It seems now that the rules of the law 270 will be in practice even more severe.

Here I want to discuss a point that I have not seen discussed, namely the transition period from the old law to the new.

This year 2009 we have activated at Insubria all the old courses. The 270 comes into force in 2010. For the Science faculty at Como the 270 requires that the courses be cut in 2010 by 25 percent.

But there is a severe contradiction here: courses cannot close in one year. Students who commenced a course have the right to finish it, in the following two years (or one year in the case of the specialistica).

It is difficult to hide from this contradiction because when staff are assigned to courses in the ministerial computer it will be painfully evident.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Life in Italy: Bad news for Insubria

Il Sole 24 Ore has made a ranking of Italian Universities. Insubria is in the middle. Here is the list of public universities, some of which I list below with their scores. The bad news is that Insubria is the penultimate in the score for student results at the maturità.

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Category Theory 2009, Cape Town

I have just returned from Cape Town and the CT 2009 conference, whose guiding spirit was George Janelidze. The area in and around Cape Town is very beautiful. George and his children Zurab and Tamar were incredibly hospitable.

Maybe because I am Australian I enjoyed most the talks by Steve Lack, on the demimonde, and Ross Street, on Frobenius functors. (Of course I cannot comment on talks for which I was (co)author.) I enjoyed also the talk of Dusko Pavlovic.

Bob Pare continues his work on double categories - he has in mind the algebra of categories, functors and bimodules. Naturally there is a comparison to be made with our work on cartesian bicategories. So far I remain unconvinced by the double category point of view.

Categories of posts

This blog is a mixture of comments on mathematics, computer science and life in Italy. Most of the posts have come from discussions with
Nicoletta Sabadini; many were suggested by her. However as writer I take responsibility. The posts are mixed so that I suggest if you have particular interests that you click on particular labels below.